Since the last few years, Prashan Bhushan, senior lawyer, has fired up the Indian political scene through his missionary legal practice.In the legal fraternity he is a loner because he is, always, on the wrong side of the power set up in New Delhi. In fact, when one meets the slow and soft-speaker, he hardly looks like a lawyer who is capable of shaking-up the government and its cronies.But, his...

Social exclusion of children belonging to marginalised groups and barriers to children's access to their rights-based entitlements were highlighted as crucial issues confronting the society at a workshop on children's rights here recently. Activists said children being forced to work as labourers was an “abysmal failure” of all institutions.The day-long workshop was organised jointly by Save the Children, Prayatna, Society for All Round Developemnt (SARD), Consumer Unity and Trust Society...

A row between the EU and India over the transit of generic drugs through Europe has been resolved, negotiators told Reuters news agency.As a result of the deal at an India-EU summit in Brussels, an Indian complaint to the World Trade Organization will be suspended, India's trade minister said.But some fear the free trade agreement (FTA) at the core of the summit will hurt generic drug production.The FTA, one of...

Recently an interesting article appeared in The New York Times on how after the completion of a social audit at Nagarkurnool in Andhra Pradesh, villagers punished a local official for swindling funds allocated to the central government's flagship project, the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee scheme. The irate villagers tied the official's hands and paraded him around the neighbouring villages. This is not a one-off incident; similar accounts have...

The Assange saga may be as good for the jurisprudence of rape as the whole WikiLeaks issue may be for the strength of free speech and the Internet.Julian Paul Assange's life as a hacker and “rogue journalist” (as he is to some people) had the makings of a classic Hollywood potboiler, initially. Eventually, it appeared to have turned into high drama, with two women alleging rape and molestation, a Swedish...